New PDF release: Antonio's Devils: Writers of the Jewish Enlightenment and

By Jeremy Dauber

ISBN-10: 0804749019

ISBN-13: 9780804749015

Antonio’s Devils bargains either traditionally and theoretically with the origins of recent Hebrew and Yiddish literature by means of tracing the development of some notable writers who, for varied purposes and in a number of methods, mentioned Scripture for his or her personal function, as Antonio’s devil,” Shylock, does within the service provider of Venice.By interpreting the paintings of key figures within the early background of Jewish literature in the course of the prism in their allusions to classical Jewish texts, the ebook focuses recognition at the marvelous and hugely complicated recommendations the maskilim hired to accomplish their polemical and ideological objectives. Dauber makes use of this system to ascertain foundational texts by way of the various Jewish Enlightenment’s finest and critical authors, achieving new and sometimes astonishing conclusions.

An aged black grandmother passes at the tale of the family's Jewish origins to her younger granddaughter, Carol Olivia. As relatives flee the Spanish Inquisition, are abducted by way of pirates and finally sail to the United States, one daughter in every one new release is given the identify Olivia, from the Hebrew Shulamit that means "peace," to honor the Jewish a part of their ancestry.

Moses Mendelssohn (17291786) was once the superior Jewish philosopher of his day and one of many best-known figures of the German Enlightenment, incomes the sobriquet the Socrates of Berlin’. He was once completely taken with the primary factor of Enlightenment spiritual pondering: the inevitable clash among cause and revelation in an age contending with person rights and spiritual toleration.

The inspiration of ""self"" and ""other"" and its illustration in art and literature is a vital subject in present cultural sciences in addition to in our lifestyle in modern Western societies. in addition, the idea that of ""self"" and ""other"" and its imaginary dichotomy is gaining an increasing number of political effect in a global of resurfacing ideology-ridden conflicts.

Additional info for Antonio's Devils: Writers of the Jewish Enlightenment and the Birth of Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literature (Stanford Studies in Jewish History and C)

Sample text

67. A connection between the play’s two plots is developed by John Russell Brown in his “Love’s Wealth and the Judgment of The Merchant of Venice,” in Barnet 81–90, 82. 68. Danson 86. 69. ” 70. See Shapiro passim. 25 26 Setting the Stage hinting at the national dimensions of Shylock’s struggle with Antonio and presenting Shylock’s ultimate failure as a textual failure, also adumbrates much of the tension between Jews and Christians in the early modern period—a tension at the heart of the development of the writing of Haskala, and thus, eventually, modern Jewish literature.

27. Tova Cohen, “Bein-tekstualiut besifrut hahaskala: mekomo shel hatekst habilti katuv,” Bikoret ufarshanut 31 (1995), 37–52. See also Cohen “Hatekhnika” 145–150, particularly her comments on the reading of the weekly Torah portion (146). See also Katz Tradition 57, 158 and Alter Modern 6–7. Allusion in a Jewish Key their work should and must serve as a starting point for any critical endeavor attempting to study this literature. Indeed, much of the analysis in this book’s later chapters follows these works’ critical assumptions: a strong authorial hand using the vital and familiar canonical text in the (partial) expectation of a learned reader,28 accompanied by the authorial assumption that said reader would have greater familiarity with, and stronger aVect toward, canonical material with strong resonances in Jewish life and liturgy.

Shapiro 136. See also 151. 19 20 Setting the Stage One might suppose that such movement by Christian Hebraists away from classic Christological Biblical interpretations, to say nothing of the increasing adoption of Jewish and rabbinical scholarship, could only lead to positive rapprochement between Jew and non-Jew. A simple look at our scene from The Merchant of Venice shows how wrong such a supposition would be. 50 The anxieties Shapiro locates in contemporary Christians—that “a Christian is the antithesis of a Jew and yet, in certain circumstances, is potentially indistinguishable from one”51—are adumbrated in this exchange over Biblical texts: can agreement over principles of textual debate lead to an undesired, even heretical, rapprochement?